


drifting

by OceanMyth



Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [23]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, and so is sokka & toph, but aang's kids are there in a peripheral way, edited for ao3 consumption, it's pretty much an introspective, my widower!aang ficlet from tumblr, this one's sad lads, widower!Aang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMyth/pseuds/OceanMyth
Summary: Katara dies, and Aang's world breaks apart at the seams.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113209
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	drifting

Aang knows the moment she dies—there’s a great gaping hole of emptiness in him, like all the love he’s ever known has faded all at once. He is empty and the world shudders in grief. 

Toph and her girls are the only ones who know how scarred the seabed of Yue Bay is after that day, but they’ll keep his secret shame hidden. It rains for a month straight after Katara dies, and people say that the world itself is mourning the lost love of the Avatar. 

Aang can barely remember the funeral, let alone the days before it. The days after it blur as well, fading and smudging into one another— he’s adrift, floating free of the world and beyond it. 

Unchained, unattached and incomplete. 

He didn’t know that ships miss their anchors.

The kids are fighting sometimes, he can hear them in the night, struggling to figure out what they are supposed to do, how they are supposed to fill the shoes of Master Katara, Healer Katara, Grand Lotus Katara, the first and last bender of the Southern Water Tribe.

Aang would try to help them, but he doesn’t know how to do that himself.

Aang doesn’t heal with time, not quite, and not this time. There is still a hole in his heart, where love used to sit, and maybe that’s dramatic and maybe he should focus more on the people who are left in his life but—

Who knew that finding your way back to earth after being lost a thousand feet in the air would be so hard?

Aang does come closer back to the ground with time. Clouds shepherd him with Kya’s gentle presence, the wind blows strong and steady in Tenzin’s unwavering belief, and Bumi and Sokka are there to provide a map.

His family is there to bring him back to earth this time.

He’s not healed, not sure he’ll ever be healed again, but his feet touch against the ground again, and there is more to life than simply absence.

He gets to meet his grandkids, gets to be there for Tenzin as his youngest son struggles with fatherhood for the first time. Gets to teach them all airbending when he has the time. He takes them to the Southern Air Temple, and the grounds fill with the laughter of children for the first time in over a century. Tenzin catches Aang crying.

It’s not the love of his people, but it fills his heart much the same.

Meelo has Katara’s eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> New readers: Hello, I apologize for the pain-- if you enjoyed this, there will no doubt be more pain soon @justoceanmyth on tumblr.
> 
> To those that have already seen it: You knew this was coming, and that it was going to be painful. I appreciate you going through the pain a second time though! 💙


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